The pharaoh has someone spying on Valdemar to see how the murderer's return is being handled.

The two Tayledras are in a boxy stone-walled room; it resembles one of the shielded Work Rooms in the pharaoh's palace, though it's had what are clearly some temporary furnishings hauled in. 

A stocky, not quite stout red-haired woman in green robes is sitting with them; she's recognizable as one of the Valdemarans who accompanied the Healers for a while but then headed back to Velgarth when the aftermath of the war was mostly settled. She's currently looking Moondance in the eye, asking him something about their decision to tell the Heralds about Urtho's Tower when they started asking after Leareth's history. 

Moondance is scrunched up against Starwind and not quite meeting her eyes. "I - it felt right. Necessary." 

"Can you say anything more about that." 

Squirm. "It - is not generally very clear. What She wishes of us. Of me. I - thought I could glimpse the edge of something, how it would fit into a pattern..." 

Starwind looks straight ahead, his face impassive. 

"And - how did you, er, get your orders? In the Tower." 

Starwind answers, still without expression. "Karna, the Scrollsworn, said that Someone wished to speak with us. She took us to the Moonpaths - the spirit world - and left us there with a leshy'a Kal'enedral, one of Her spirit warriors and servants. The leshy'a took us to speak with the Goddess herself." A flicker of awe in his eyes, followed by something more complex, but he smooths it away. 

"Go on." 

"It is not our place to speak of it." 

Melody's voice is mild, her expression level, but her eyes narrow slightly. "Then I have authorization to read it directly from your mind. The King wants to know. It's pretty damned relevant." 

They drop by the palace in the afternoon to make sure that Vanyel is okay; it looks like Cheliax and Osirion are not publicly at each others' throats but that still leaves an awful lot of scope for things to be horrible. 

Vanyel is back in his temporary diamond workshop after returning with Leareth. He's not singing to himself this time. His expression is distant. 

He greets them cheerfully enough, though. "Good to see you! Er, what brings you out here? Is everything all right back in Cheliax?" 

"Yeah, it's all fine. We just wanted to check on you. Are you okay?"

He gives them an odd look. "I'm not the one who got horribly murdered." 

"Personally I have never been horribly murdered but sometimes I am still not okay."

"...I guess I'm pretty pissed off. At the Star-Eyed. And - I don't know, I would be angry with Starwind and Moondance, but...I almost don't feel like I can be. It's not like I didn't know their pact with Her came first." 

"I dunno, I think there are lines you shouldn't cross even if your god says to. Fazil wouldn't have -"

"Abadar wouldn't ask it of me," he says quietly. "But if I'd been chosen by some other god, when I was ten and going to bed hungry every night..."

"I - had enough information to know that She could be very ruthless. I, just– I wish it felt more like She understood how much value this destroyed. It's never ever going to be the same - it's going to hurt relations between Valdemar and Osirion, because it was our call to bring them in to help at all, and - and I still don't know what mistake I, we, made there, that I could've done different with what I knew at the time..." 

Nod. "I don't know that there's anything you could've done."

"I don't think the pharaoh's going to stop - resurrecting the rest of your war dead and trading you whatever else you need - he can't be stupid enough to blame you or shortsighted enough to want the river of diamonds to dry up -"

"I know. I think it's being handled as well as it possibly could be, and - it doesn't seem like it'll cost Cheliax anything irreparable, in terms of collaboration with Osirion, and Valdemar's...going to be fine." 

He looks down at the floor, arms crossed. "I - just - I guess I have some personal feelings here too. They were some of my closest friends, Starwind was one of Savil's best friends - they saved my life, they gave me so much, and - I can't be friends with them after this. It wouldn't mean anything, anymore. Maybe Savil can salvage something there but I feel like I lost all the parts of the friendship that were real, that mattered, and - gods - and I'm so angry with Her. For what it cost them, too, not just me. Poor Moondance. He was just looking like a kicked puppy the whole time we questioned them. Starwind, not so much - I, I don't know..." 

"It was an awful thing to do to them, too. I'm so sorry, Van."